Master Motivator

“Back to school to, Back to school, to show my dad I’m not a fool”

It’s the morning of the first day of school, and I must admit this day has been emotional day for me in the past. My daughter is going in 7th grade this year, and that means shit just got real! I’m not sure how it is where you live, but for us 7th grade is the beginning of playing school sports, instead of just county sports. It’s means away volleyball games where she might not be home until after 10:00. It means more responsibilities and more adventures. It means she’s grown another year older right before my very eyes!

The house is quiet right now, which is why I decided to get up and write. It’s a surreal feeling knowing that your house is going to be empty for the day. My husband is a teacher in the 7th grade at her school, so that means he’s going back to school also. I love having them home for summer, and I love it when they go back to school!

Over the years, the things that used to be important to me, aren’t quite as important anymore. I guess it’s because I have an older son, and I’ve changed over the last 25 years of parenting. Thank God I have the ability to learn new ways of thinking, and to create different environments for each child. Parenting is a gift, and it’s a way to see the reflections of our own troubled hearts.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Your kids are a part of your journey, but their journey isn’t your journey. That’s where parents get confused, and take their feelings of rejection, or abandonment and they project them onto their kids. I know your probably thinking “I would never do that”, but unless your conscious then yes you do.

We as parents have troubled hearts, and minds. We were once children of unconscious parents, and now we get to decide if we pass on the dysfunction to our kids, or if we decide to learn a lesson from our children. Every single parent on the planet has at one time made a decision based out of fear. It doesn’t always just say I’m afraid, it sometimes comes out critical, judgmental, angry, or just plain cray cray! You might even think to yourself later, where did that come from?

Your kids are only on loan to you for a short time, and then they are going to be off living their lives. We parents need to pay better attention and see what we’re doing that harms our kids personal development, but makes us feel better. (News flash Co-dependency isn’t a good thing)

There’s a whole generation of grown up kids that everyone wants to point the finger at and talk bad about. The poor millennials have been dubbed lazy and spoiled, and numerous other negative things.

But what did these children do wrong?

Were they born in the wrong years?

Did they get to choose how they were parented?

Did they get to decide what’s good for them?

Or was it really the parents that changed?

Think about for a minute, and start placing the blame where it belongs. The kids didn’t change a thing, but the parents sure did change. They decided they would become helicopter parents, because that’s what you do when you love your kids. You hover, and you micromanage their every move. You also choose to make yourself a servant to these kids, and all the while you think your doing it for them, when in fact your trying to heal your broken spots. And, while your busy getting your needs met, your robbing them of all of the feelings and situations they need to learn from.

Your job is teach and to guide and to love. It’s not to spoil and to cause a ruckus every time they don’t get their way. Your job is not to make sure everything is fair, because the first lesson your kid needs to learn in life is that there’s not a damn thing fair about it. Everyone doesn’t win a trophy, and everyone’s not going to like you.

If your late for things, or you miss them, then there’s going to be consequences. If we can learn to awaken from our unconscious conditioning, then we could learn to parent again from our authentic souls. If we could become conscious to our own needs and wants, versus their needs then the world will be a much better place.

The time for a new beginning has arrived,

Where family is no longer the chain that binds us

But is the earth from which we will blossom

And the sky we learn to fly.

No matter how the family unit looks,

It begins with a parent and child.

A relationship that holds the energy of the sun,

With power to break patterns and resurrect the spirit.

The awakened family waits for no one,

It begins to heal right here, right now.

It recognizes that these sacred bonds

Can revolutionize the planet.

Shefali Tsabary, Ph.D.

We must move away from the shackles of fear that we’re passed onto us from our parents, and learn to replace them with trust and love. We have to let go of our unrealistic ideas of what being a good parent looks like, and decide to go beyond the realm of our unconsciousness.